


The Long Road

by Razzaroo



Series: HoB series (working title) [3]
Category: Black Cat
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 22:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2523611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzaroo/pseuds/Razzaroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where were you when the world went to Hell? Eve was in a mansion, waiting to storm the gates of the Apostles and grind them into dust. Now she's on the run with a stranger, a man with a Roman Numeral tattoo on his chest, and there's nowhere left to go but down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To Hell

_War does not determine who is right – only who is left._ **Bertrand Russell** ****

* * *

 

One of the greatest things about being a sweeper is the travel. The expenses, such as petrol and maintenance, weigh on Sven’s mind but Eve loves to travel. She loves seeing new people, new cities.

While she was used to travel, the bus is something new. The entire vehicle rumbles and, when Train leans against the window, she can hear it rattling against his head. It smells odd, nothing like Sven’s beat up little blue car at all; his car carries the faint smell of cigarettes while the bus has an odd, dusty smell. She can’t quite put her finger on what it is.

“Hey, Princess,” Train lifts his head from the window and inclines it backwards, towards the back of the bus, “Check out our fellow passengers.”

She twists in her seat to look at the rows behind them. At the back, she sees a pair of men, one bigger and bulkier than the other with a shock of blond hair and a cross shaped scar on his cheek; the other man is shorter, weedier, with long black hair and narrow eyes. Two rows in front of them is another man with black hair pushed back from his face and a thin moustache; he’s swathed in a black robe and a long, wrapped item is leaning against the seat next to him. Apart from Train and Eve, they’re the only passengers on the bus. Eve leans back against her seat again and looks up at the closed air vent above her head.

“They’re all going to join the alliance too?” she asks, risking a glance behind her again.

“Yeah,” Train confirms, leaning his head against the window again, “Pay attention to them and you can pick up on it; they all have the same dangerous air about them.”

Now that he mentions it, Eve can sense it; a strange, vicious aura hangs like a cloud over each of the men at the back of the bus. An odd shiver runs up her spine; she knows there’s no threat from them, not here, but there’s something about them that unsettles her.

Some deep, dark part of her brain tells her it’s because she sees herself in that vicious aura, tells her that she was once worse. She shakes the feeling off. She’s not like that anymore; she’s a different girl, a better girl. She’ll never be that way again. After this business with Creed’s done, she can carry on learning the tools of the trade of being a sweeper, learning to protect people.

The bus lurches to a stop with a bizarre, almost death rattle and the doors hiss open. It’s stopped alongside a ramshackle bus stop; the only passenger waiting is a little old lady with a faded purple cardigan, clinging to some shopping bags. Train looks at the number above the bus stop and stands up.

“This is our stop Princess,” he says, pulling his satchel over his shoulder.

Eve slides out of her seat but she hesitates for a moment in the aisle. The old woman has paid for her ticket and had found a seat but is struggling with her bags; she’d had to put some down in the aisle to slide into the narrow gap between the seats and she’s fumbling to pick them up again. Eve pauses beside her, helping to pick up the bags and set them on the seat next to the old woman.

“Thank you, love,” the woman says, pushing a steel coloured curl away from her face before settling back into her seat.

The bus driver side eyes them as they get off the bus. He regards the moustachioed man’s wrapped luggage with suspicion but doesn’t say anything. Train beams at him and offers an oddly cheery ‘ _thank you’_ ; Eve gets the impression he’s mocking the driver but says nothing to him.

Train pulls out the map from the satchel. The other three sweepers look at him out of the corners of their eyes; the weedy one’s mouth curls up in a sardonic smile. Eve ignores them as they set out on their own, instead moving closer to Train so she can peer at the map as well. He traces up along the map and taps on one of the grid squares where he’s put a circle of red.

“Gotta make our way up here,” he says, tucking the map away again, “Looks like a bit of a trek but it shouldn’t be too bad. Maybe, I dunno, ten or fifteen minutes.”

“We’ve been left behind,” Eve says, nodding towards the other sweepers.

Train screws up his face and shrugs, “No point in rushing everywhere. If you do that, you’ll end up worrying about stuff that you forget in your hurry. And then you have a face full of wrinkles before you’re thirty.” His face breaks out in a grin, “Hey, maybe that’s why Sven’s been getting so many silver hairs these days!”

“Only because of you,” Eve shoots back, making her way up the road, “I’d suggest giving you all his responsibilities but you definitely seem to work better as a sidekick.”

“Sidekick?” Train catches up with her, his expression one of mock horror, “I’ll have you know, Princess, I’m the hero of this tale.”

She rolls her eyes, “Isn’t the hero supposed to only know he’s the hero at the end of the story?”

“Hmm, maybe. Never been much of a reader myself. We never know; the information broker might end up being the dashing prince who saves the day.”

 

* * *

 

 

 

The meeting place is more impressive than Eve had been expecting. She’d expected something smaller, more subtle. The mansion looks untouched, unlived in; her guess is that it’s owned specifically for things like this.

The back of Train’s neck has turned red from the sun but, apart from that, he looks completely unaffected from the 30 minute trek. Somewhere along the way, they’d fallen into step with the three other sweepers and the group of them stand outside the gates.

“Impressive,” Train says, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand, “Not what I expected from an information broker.”

“Pfft,” the blond man is unimpressed. He takes off his headphones so that they rest around the back of his neck, “I’ve seen better.”

Train rolls his eyes and mouths ‘ _bullshit.’_ The other three sweepers head through the gate and Train hangs back a little before he follows; he scans along the rooftop, looks around the perimeter. Eve leans in close to him.

“What are you looking for?” she says, her voice low.

“Hmm, not sure,” Trains say as they walk through the gate, “Keep your eyes peeled, OK?”

Eve nods. She sees Glin, the intelligence specialist, waiting for them outside the front door. The corners of his mouth turn up into a smile when he sees them.

“Glad you’re all here. I thought you’d all be successful,” he says. He sees that he’s getting daggers glared at him and his expression turns outright amused, “Ah, did you all get sick of that little game? That was just a little joke on you all.”

Eve glances up at the blond sweeper’s scowling face.

‘ _We were mistreated by that game,’_ she thinks, ‘ _He seems to have a little sadistic streak.’_

He catches her eye before he gestures towards the door, “Feel free to go inside; you still have time.”

Eve trails behind Train towards the door. She slightly in awe of this place; she’s never seen anywhere look so spotless. Not even Rudman’s place had been so…untouched. It’s eerie. More than that, she can’t shake the feeling she’s being watched. The small hairs on the back of her neck are standing on end.

“Heartnet,” Glin approaches them, hands in his pockets, “Good to see you here.”

“Ha, after the shit that game put me through?” Train says, grinning, “No way I wouldn’t come.” He pauses for a moment, “This place really yours? Little big for guy in your line of work, isn’t it?”

“I liked it,” Glin shrugs, “Though, looking back, it is a little too isolated for my tastes.”

Train studies him for a moment before slinging his arm around Eve’s shoulders, “Whatever floats your boat, I guess. Come on, Princess, let’s get out of the sun; my neck feels like a bacon rasher.”

Eve shrugs his arm off. The hot sun beats down on the top of her head and she has to admit, the idea of getting out from under it is very tempting.

“Someone else arrived earlier,” Glin says, “Had an eye patch, said he was your partner.”

“Ah, damn,” Train says, sounding impressed, “Now Princess, how does that beat up old car beat us here?”

Eve shrugs and follows the hallway through to the main living area. Leaving the heat of the summer is a relief. Inside the house is just as immaculate as the outside; it makes Eve think of a dollhouse. A modern and sparse dollhouse but it has the same artificial vibe.

“Sven!” Train says chirpily, striding over to his partner.

Sven was standing by a long counter, his briefcase at his feet and with a cigarette in hand. Whatever his training had been, he doesn’t look any different for it.

“Hey, you made it,” Sven says, lowering his cigarette, “Surprised the public transport didn’t chew you up and spit you out. Eve would have been fine, by the way.”

Eve resists the urge to hug him, “When did you get here?”

Sven glances up at a clock on the wall opposite, “Not too long ago. Maybe about…half an hour?”

Train snaps his fingers as if he’s just remembered something, “So what were the results of the super secret training?”

There’s a long pause between question and answer. Sven lifts the cigarette to his mouth and takes a long drag on it; he looks as if he’s considering what to say, how much to divulge and what to keep to himself.

“It went OK,” he says eventually, exhaling a cloud of wispy smoke.

Train fans the smoke away with his hand, “Great. Can’t wait to see the results.”

Eve glances round the room; Rinslet is completely absent, which isn’t really much of a surprise to her. Rinslet flits in and out of their lives, somehow always being there when they need her and never really revealing what she’d been doing up until that point.

“Where’s Rinslet?” she asks, looking back at Sven.

“Well, paraphrasing a little here, but she said that she’s not a sweeper and not all that interested. That and she had to get back to her own work,” Sven’s expression is a little exasperated, “And that if things get bad, you should use Train as a meat shield. That last part were her exact words.”

Yep, that sounded like Rinslet. “OK.”

“She was joking!” Train says, sounding annoyed. Eve hopes that he realises that she wasn’t being serious; he’d be an inadequate meat shield and she could form a perfectly good shield on her own, out of her own two hands.

“So, is this all there is?” Sven asks, looking over at the other sweepers gathered in the room, “I expected more…impressive numbers.”

 “We can’t have everything Svenny-baby,” Trains says, “Anyone you know?”

“Yeah, two,” Sven says. He inclines his head towards the moustachioed man, “Touma Fudou: took down seven S-class guys in the past three years.” He looked over at a young brown haired man who was sat reading a comic book, “And Kevin McDougall: young guy, pretty green, but he took down a drug cartel by himself. Pretty impressive.”

Eve tunes them out. She notices another woman on the other side of the room, looking completely relaxed and at home around this group of men. Eve’s happy to see her there, glad to see she’s not the “token” female in the group; she saw enough of that in her books.

Glin is standing near the doorway that leads out into the hall. He looks troubled and anxious and Eve realises that he’s positioned himself as far from any windows as he can while still being able to survey the room. He looks as if he’s expecting something to go wrong. She slips away from Train and Sven and joins him by the hall.

“Are you OK?” she asks, keeping her voice low.

“At the moment, yes,” he replies. For a moment she sees something flicker across his face, in his eyes; a flash of blue where there should be hazel. She blinks and then it’s gone.

“Just the moment?”

“Well,” Glin says, offering her the barest of smiles, “It could change. I need to do another security sweep; something doesn’t feel right.”

“…Do you mind if I join you?” Eve asks.

“I don’t know why you’d want to,” Glin says, slightly puzzled, “It’s not that exciting.”

Eve shrugs, “I have to learn it some time.”

There’s a hesitation before he says, “Well then sure. If your friends don’t mind.”

She glances back at Train and Sven to see them lost in conversation with each other. Sven’s expression is deadly serious but she can’t see Train’s face. Sven catches her eye and raises an eyebrow; she mouths “ _bathroom”_ before she follows Glin along the hallway. He heads out of the front door and back into the summer heat.

The heat rises off of the concrete in waves, making the air shimmer and dance. The air is filled with the chirping of insects. Eve wets her lips with her tongue and trots to catch up with Glin.

“What are you looking for?” she asks him. That strange prickling feeling has returned to crawl across the back of her neck, “Do you have to do this whenever you meet up with people?”

“Anything out of the ordinary,” Glin says, his tone serious, “Doing the work that I do, I’ve made…enemies.”

Eve nods and falls silent. The pair of them go out of the front gate and along the road, looping around the fence and ducking through it again. The garden of the mansion isn’t as sparse as the interior; it’s cool and shaded with plenty of greenery. Eve waits as Glin examines the area, one hand at the ready to form a weapon if needed.

Glin crouches down and pushes aside a pile of dirt. When he stands again, he’s holding the mangled remains of a security camera and his face is drawn in a frown. Eve’s eyes meet his and, in that moment, they both realise that everything is about to go wrong.

Eve turns back towards the fence, wanting to go and warn the others while Glin carries on his check. Before she can move, there’s a huge explosion around the front of the mansion. The ground shakes beneath her and she collapses onto the ground, her legs shaking. She can’t hear anything except for a constant, piercing whistle and she can taste blood where she’s bitten her tongue. Her stomach roils with nausea.

A pair of hands, slender but strong, land on her shoulders and haul her back to her feet. Glin grabs hold of her hand and pulls her away, keeping close to the fence, sneaking around behind the trees. Her head feels light and she sways with dizziness.

“Eve!” Glin takes hold of her shoulders again. His face is frantic, his eyes wide behind cracked glasses, a bright vivid blue colour. She blinks; his eyes aren’t meant to be blue. “Eve, we need to go. We need to get out of here, get some place safe.”

Eve shakes her head, pushing past the ringing in her ears, “We need…to help Sven. Train.”

Glin’s eyes search her face for a few moments, checking her over for injuries, before he sighs. His hands move off of her shoulders again and he rakes his fingers through his dark hair. He looks torn between helping the other sweepers and getting her away.

“All right,” he says over the cacophony of voices and footsteps that are coming from within the house, “But we need to go quickly and quietly. Are you steady?”

Eve blinks again, trying to clear her head. The wobbly, shaky feeling in her legs has gone and she nods tentatively.

Glin leads her away from the fence, ducking behind trees for cover, heading towards a small side door. They creep in along a narrow hallway. Eve can feel blood trickling from her nose. She can hear the sounds of fighting coming from further in the house; she can make out the familiar rhythm of the gun in Sven’s briefcase. Her heart aches. She should be with them.

A bullet flies past her, catching her hair in its trajectory. She whips around, her hair already forming two blades. A pair of Creed’s soldiers stand in the wide hallway opposite her. Quickly, she clasps her hands together, forming a shield right as they start firing at her again. She feels every bullet that struck the shield, like stones striking flesh, and she flinches. One of them sets his gun down and draws out a knife instead, looping around to the side to charge at her. Eve moves to stand up but one of her legs cramps and collapses underneath her. The blades unravel and her hair falls down around her face again.

Before the soldier can reach her, a shimmering ribbon wraps around his neck and yanks him backwards, the golden weight on the end striking him at the base of his skull. The ma staggers backwards and collapses to the ground. It gives Eve a chance to get to her feet. She darts and dances around the second man, not giving him a chance to fix on her as a target. She plunges into a forward roll, her shoulder cracking against the ground. She grits her teeth against the blaze of pain that races up her arm and brings up her arm to smash a mallet against the man’s head. For a moment he’s still but then he crumples to the ground. Eve kicks the machine gun away and turns to see her rescuer.

The first thing she notices is the shining fabric wound tightly around the soldier’s neck, constricting his breathing. His fingers are curled at this throat, clawing at the fabric in an attempt to tear it away. Eve’s eyes trail up along the fabric to the man holding it. In terms of height and build, he’d be indistinguishable from any other man in a crowd. It’s his face that stands out; his features are slightly feminine, almost delicate, and framed with shaggy black bangs. The last time Eve had seen this face had been after the confrontation between the Numbers and the Apostles at the castle. Then, his eyes had been mischievous and curious; now, they’re filled with cold fury. It’s aged him. She realises that Glin never existed; he’d been a disguised Chronos Number all along and she mentally kicks herself for not realising it.

Eve hears the soldier let out a choking gasp and snaps into action. She grabs hold of Number X’s arm, throwing him off balance and causing the fabric to loosen from around the soldier’s neck and slither to the ground.

“You don’t have to kill him,” she says, staring at him imploringly, “The others need you more than you need to kill him.”

He looks down at her and his eyes soften slightly. The soldier has slumped on the ground, unmoving. Number X presses his heel against the soldier’s mask, causing it to splinter and crack, exposing the man’s unconscious face. He takes a shuddering breath before coiling up his weapon, looping it over his arm.

“You’re right,” he says, that icy gleam returning to his eyes, “Let’s go and save your friends.”

 

* * *

 

 

Much to Eve’s surprise, the rest of the mansion is empty and silent. There a splatters of blood along the floor and walls and the air stinks of gun powder. Number X stays ahead of Eve, that shimmering mantle draped over his shoulders. He tells her it’s called Seiren; when she asked what it meant, he only smiled and said it was hardly important.

The pair of them comb the room that the sweepers had gathered in. With one arm, Eve’s formed a curved blade and, with the other, a shield. There are bullet holes in the walls and the furniture is smashed to pieces. Something skids under Eve’s foot and she nearly loses her balance. Her heart leaps into her throat when she sees what it is.

Sven’s lighter lies forgotten under some broken glass.

With the tip of the blade, she pushes the glass aside before letting go of the blade form and picking the lighter up. She turns to call out to Number X but he holds a finger to his lips before beckoning her to join him where he’s crouched by the window. She picks her way across the room and drops into a crouch alongside him. Peering through the window, her skin crawls with fear and she wants to be sick.

There are hundreds of soldiers spanning the front yard, forming a semi-circle around the front of the house. Some of them are digging a long, deep pit near the fence. Her hands grip the window sill and she feels Number X’s arm snake round her shoulders.

The other sweepers, including Sven, stand in the centre of the yard. Eve’s attention zeroes in on Sven; he holds his head high, staring the shoulder down defiantly. She can see his briefcase in the corner of the yard, discarded on top of a stack of weapons. Train and the woman sweeper are nowhere to be seen. Sven’s mouth moves but Eve can’t hear a word of what he’s saying. The soldiers in front of the group of sweepers raise their rifles.

The world seems to move in slow motion. The rifles fire and Eve sees the bullets move through the air. She sees Sven’s expression shift from one of defiance to one of horrified realisation. The bullets strike with bursts of scarlet and Eve watches with hot, wet eyes as Sven keels over, his blood pooling beneath him.  A sob bursts from her lips even as Number X’s arms wrap around her waist and he hauls her away from the window, lifting her over his shoulder and rushing her out of the house.

He vaults over the back fence, landing on the ground with a jarring thud, and the world finally catches up with her. More tears well up in her eyes and spill over, leaving hot sticky tracks down her cheeks. A ball of painful, aching grief builds up in her chest but it doesn’t escape as a sob; instead, she screams in anguish, one hand gripping the fabric of Number X’s jacket, the other pounding at his shoulder.

“ _Sven!”_ she shrieks, squirming against Number X’s hold.

His hold tightens on her and she feels his speed pick up. She’s deaf to the sound of his ragged breathing. In her head, she repeats a mantra, in time with every heavy step, as if going over the same words will make everything make sense: _he’sgonehe’sgonehe’sgone._

She slumps and curls against Number X’s shoulders, her fingers curling to clutch at his jacket, her body wracked with choking sobs. She squeezes her eyes closed against the tears that still leak from her eyes; maybe if she closes her eyes, she’ll wake up and it will all be a nightmare, an awful nightmare , and the image of Sven falling to the ground in a spray of blood will be erased by the warmth of the waking world.

Of course, there’s no such waking. Eve is jolted back into reality when Number X collapses to his knees under a copse of trees. He let go of her, allowing her to slide off of his shoulder; she landed on her tail bone and she glares at him as he creases at his waist, trying to regain his breath.

“You could have done something!” she says angrily, her voice thick with tears, “You could have stopped them or given yourself up or something. You could have saved all of them!”

Number X looks up at her, his eyes bright, his cheeks flushed with exertion. His face is mournful.

“They weren’t there for me,” he croaks, “They didn’t even know who I was.”

Eve swallows and looks at the leaves littering the ground. She knows, deep down, that he’s right. Even if they knew there was a Chronos Number X, they wouldn’t know what he looked like. He’d already displayed his skill with disguises the day they’d met under the trees at Creed’s castle.

In her mind’s eye, she sees Sven again, his expression disbelieving and horrified, his suit stained crimson, his hat flying backwards as he falls. She bites her lip and chokes out a sob, drawing her knees up and burying her face in her skirt. Her whole body shakes with sobs.

“Look at me,” she hears Number X say, “Come on, Eve. I need you to look at me.”

Eve hiccups and rubs at her eyes with her sleeve. Does he understand that the world has crashed down around her? Sven’s dead, Train’s gone and she has no idea where Rinslet is. She’s alone in the world, except for a strange Chronos Number with bright blue eyes. She peeks up at him, her eyes red rimmed and her face streaked with tears.

The shining fabric is piled on the ground beside him and he’s holding out a handkerchief for her. She accepts it and presses it against her eyes, wiping away the tears that are making their way down her cheeks. It’s then that Eve realises that she’d long forgotten what he was called.

“What’s your name?” she asks when her sobs subside and she can breathe properly again.

Number X blinks, slightly surprised; the question clearly wasn’t one he’d expected, considering the circumstances.

After a moment, though, his expression changes to a soft, sympathetic smile.

“My name,” he says, “is Lin Shao Lee.”


	2. To Purgatory

_From the end, spring new beginnings._ **Pliny the Elder.**

* * *

 

Shao Lee carries her from the copse of trees, one arm holding her under the knees, the other around her waist. He’s a lot stronger than he looks in any case; his smaller frame is oddly deceptive. Eve holds onto the mantle, which he calls Seiren. The fabric is smooth and runs like water through her fingers; she can see silvery threads of orichalcum woven into the fabric and, when she pulls it tight, they become taut and sharp.

Her eyes feel stiff and gummy from crying and her mouth is thick and dry. She feels a little pathetic being carried by someone; the last time she had been, she’d been badly injured. Now she has no such excuse. However, she rests her head on Shao Lee’s shoulder, feeling utterly drained and exhausted. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees Sven falling again but she can’t cry any more. She’s almost completely certain that her tear well had dried up completely and she’ll never cry again in her life.

“Eve,” Shao Lee says after a while, “You need to walk from here. Are your legs all right?”

She nods. They’ve left the empty green fields behind in exchange for dirt roads and tired houses. Eve wobbles slightly when Shao Lee sets her down again but keeps her balance. He takes Seiren back and slings it over his shoulder, making sure that the ends don’t trail on the floor.

“What are you going to do now?” Eve asks, following him along the dirt road. She picks leaves from her hair and attempts to brush off the dirt from her clothes.

“First of all?” Shao Lee considers his answer for a moment, “Get you somewhere safe. Considering your abilities, and your ties to the Black Cat, I doubt the idea that the Apostles aren’t looking for you.”

Eve remembers all of Creed’s talk of nanomachines in the church the day he went after Sven. She shudders; she hates the idea that they might find a way to use her nanomachines to fuel his mad goals.

“And after that?” she says, “What will you do then?”

“Go back to Chronos,” he says, “Tell them the details about what happened, if they don’t know already. See about changing plans for that attack on the Apostles; they’ll be expecting Numbers, but if I can convince Sephiria to throw everything we have at them, we should be able to take them down.”

The road stretches on indefinitely in front of them, without end behind them. Eve feels hopelessly lost and has to place her trust completely in Shao Lee; he clearly has a good idea of where they are and where to go. She longs for Train. She knows that Creed wouldn’t want him dead so there’s an excellent chance he’s still alive. At least if he was with her, there wouldn’t be this awkward silence hanging between them, more oppressive than the heat, more uncomfortable than the thirst that parches her throat.

When she looks at him, Eve sees that Shao Lee’s expression is downcast and worried. She wonders what he’s thinking about, whether what happened at the mansion weighs on his mind and rests heavily on the shoulders of his conscience. Considering he was a Chronos Number, she thinks that it may be his failure in taking on the Apostles; thinking back to the two Numbers they’d encountered in Stock Town, she wonders how much stock Numbers put in their comrades’ opinions of them. If it’s a lot, she feels that he must feel ashamed about his failure to confront his enemy.

But then, of course, she knows very little about the Chronos Numbers. The two in Stock Town didn’t seem to care about what Rinslet’s companion had thought of them or even about what he’d said to them; all they’d cared about was that orders were orders and Numbers obeyed what they were told.

Shao Lee nudges her shoulder, “You can’t dwell on it right now. You need to get far away from here before you can deal with it.”

Eve swallows past the thick lump in her throat, “I wasn’t. I was thinking about Chronos.”

“Chronos? Why?”

Eve shrugs. Chronos has been a constant presence in her life, either hovering over her like a black cloud or humming in the background, quiet and easy to push to the back of her mind but never truly gone.

“Just because,” her voice comes out quieter than usual, timid and hoarse. She feels like crying again and keeps her head down, her hair falling in front of her face.

“There’s probably nothing I can’t tell you that you don’t already know,” Shao Lee says, “Mainly because I’m not allowed. The Elders like secrecy like that.”

Eve doesn’t even know how many Elders Chronos has; she hadn’t even known it had Elders, although it makes sense. They had to get orders from someone, after all. A chill runs down her spine and she shivers despite the heat of the day, rubbing at her arms. Shao Lee glances at her, concerned, and she’s surprised when he drapes Seiren over her shoulders. The fabric is silk-slippery but it’s clean. She looks up at him, confused.

“It helps,” he says, “It’s weird but it does. By all rights, Seiren is, well, a weaponised blanket.”

Eve can’t help but smile. It’s more the concern in the act, the kindness of the gesture, rather than the cover of Seiren that helps ease that strange internal chill that washes over her. Behind her, she can hear the low rumble of an engine and Shao Lee takes hold of her elbow, pulling her off of the road and ducking into a ramshackle bus shelter.

The bus that makes its way along the road is worn down and is long past its prime. Shao Lee digs in his pocket for loose change.

“It can’t be an awful idea,” he muses out loud as the bus approaches, “I’ve always wanted to catch a bus I don’t know and see where it goes.” He glances at her, “Care to join me?”

Eve bites her lip and looks down the road. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Besides, she needs his help in finding somewhere to lie low until she can get back to Annette, or even Rinslet. The bus pulls up alongside the stop, the doors hissing open.

If it can get her away from here, further away from that scene at the mansion, away from this piece of nowhere, then she’s willing to try it. She nods.

“I’ll stay with you.”

The bus driver stares down at her as Shao Lee counted out the ticket fee. She reaches up to smooth down her fringe and picks some leaves out of her hair. She’s suddenly conscious of how dishevelled she looks, with a tear stained face and tangled hair and clutching a length shining, translucent fabric. She heads for a seat towards the back of the bus and examines her reflection in the window; there’s a smudge of grey dust under once eye and she rubs at it.

“Where are we going?” Eve asks when Shao Lee takes the seat next to her.

“The capital,” he says, “Biggest city in the republic. There, we can lie low and you can see about getting someone to pick you up. After that, I’ll go back to Chronos and sort this out. We’ll be OK.”

With a pang, Eve realises that she’d left her phone in her bag, back at the mansion. She knows the numbers but she worries that, if it wasn’t destroyed, the Apostles could get hold of it.

“What if we were followed?” she asks quietly.

Shao Lee doesn’t answer for a while and she wonders if he even heard her, “I don’t think they did. For one, they would have caught us up by now. For another, I don’t think we’re they’re concern; I’m pretty sure Creed doesn’t know I exist and I definitely wouldn’t expect a little girl your age to be at a sweeper gathering.”

Well, maybe he wouldn’t but Creed knew about Eve, knew that she was inseparable from Train and Sven. She just had to hope he didn’t think she was worth going after, at least not at the moment. If he has Train, he might be happy, he might leave her alone. Something dark and cold squeezes her heart at the thought of Train in his hands.

The bus rumbles along winding, dusty country roads and Eve watches as the world slides by outside the window. Shao Lee nods off beside her, one hand loosely curled around Seiren’s end. The houses progressively become smaller, closer together, the driveways shorter. They’ve entered the suburbs and everything is still and serene. It feels unreal. It’s been such a short time and, already, the mansion feels like a world away; at least, in the physical world. It all still weighs heavy on Eve’s heart, dragging her shoulders down, tightening her throat and stinging her eyes.  She dashes her tears away again and sniffs. She can’t cry here, on the bus; if she can just hold on, wait until she’s somewhere private, then it will be easier to get through this until she can get somewhere far from this tiny republic.

Looking away from the window, she finds herself watching Shao Lee. His head nods forward as he dozes and his fringe sweeps forward, shadowing his face. He has dark eyelashes that the girls in Eve’s books would love to have. His ponytail is loose and untidy. He’s an enigma to her, she realises, a dark shape through blurred glass that she wants to reach out and find out about.

She pushes that thought to the back of her mind; they’re going to part soon enough, tomorrow at the latest, and there’s little point in investigating a man she’ll never see again.

She sighs and leans her head against the window, feeling the vibration of the bus shake throughout her entire body, and her mind wanders to how she’s going to explain what happened to Sven and Train. She knows how much it would hurt Annette and Rinslet; her stomach twists at the thought. The idea of causing any more pain makes her feel ill.

The sudden stop of the bus causes Shao Lee to lurch forward a little and he’s startled awake. For a moment, he looks around, looking slightly panicked. When he realises where he is and who’s around him, he relaxes against the back of the seat, rubbing at his eyes.

“Sorry about that,” he says sheepishly, “You OK?”

Eve stares at his faint reflection in the window, “Fine. You weren’t out that long.”

“It was still rude.”

“Yeah? So is lying about who you are,” Eve says coldly, her tone bordering on a snap.

He doesn’t flinch but a flash of guilt passes over his face before he replies, “I did what I had to.”

“Well, look at where that got us,” Eve turns to face him, “Is this the outcome of what your leader calls ‘what you have to do’?”

“This has nothing to do with Sephiria,” Shao Lee says hotly, “It was my idea from the start. She sees it as a Chronos only mission, despite the bounty on Creed’s head. She had nothing to do with it.”

Eve narrows her eyes but doesn’t say anything to that. She’d only met Sephiria Arks once and so doesn’t have the greatest impression of her to know what the woman would do. She’d heard from Rinslet that the leader of the Numbers had been condescending and manipulative. But Shao Lee seems to hold Sephiria in high regard. For that matter, the other Numbers had seemed to have a high respect for her.

“But you don’t act independently,” she says, remembering the Numbers in Stock Town and how they’d only backed down after being reprimanded for going solo, “So she had a hand in it; she approved it.”

“Because she didn’t know what would happen,” he responds, “She’s not omniscient; she can’t know everything. If you want to blame someone, blame me. I’m the one who devised it, I’m the one who gathered you all in one place. All Sephiria did was approve an idea that might have helped bring down a terrorist.” He sighs and pushes his fringe away from his face, “I’m so sorry about what happened today. But Sephiria had no hand in this.”

Eve slips Seiren from around her shoulders and folds it up on her lap before she gives it back to him. She feels a little ill; it feels petty and stupid to be annoyed at him over this but she can’t help it. She can understand his loyalty to Sephiria. But she can’t help but wish that the woman had vetoed the suggestion; maybe, if she had, then none of this would have happened. She’d still be with Sven and Train and they’d have found a way to stop Creed before everything went to hell.

She peeks up at Shao Lee to see him picking at the gold pendant sewn onto Seiren’s hem. His eyes have become distant and full of an emotion that Eve can’t identify. She’s suddenly glad that the bus is empty apart from them and the drive.

“Nothing’s going to be the same any more, is it?” she says quietly, any venom suddenly drained from her tone.

Shao Lee looks up at her and she sees that his expression is mournful.

“No,” he says eventually, “This changes everything.”

 

* * *

 

 

Shao Lee takes her to a small hotel on the edge of the inner city. It’s a small, two bed room with a tiny en suite bathroom and a sideboard with a kettle, tea bags and a pair of white china mugs. Eve’s been in a few like it with Sven and Train. The difference is that then they were a team, united and safe together; now, she’s with a mysterious man who yields little information, in a strange city and the only family she’s known is either lying dead in a lonely courtyard or scattered over the world.

She’s never felt so small in her life.

“I have to go for a bit,” Shao Lee says. His appearance has changed again; now, he has nut brown eyes and dark chestnut hair swept away from his face. Eve secretly marvels at his abilities. “To pick up a few things. I won’t be long. Will you be all right on your own?”

Eve hesitates for a moment before she nods. Any earlier animosity between them has melted away; they can’t afford to hold onto it, not while the situation is so dire.

“I’ll be fine if I stay here,” she says, “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere anyway.”

He reaches out to ruffle her hair up a little and the gesture brings back the memory of her first proper job as a sweeper, taken after a message delivered by Chronos Number II. It’s odd since, compared to what had happened in Rubeck City, Number II’s gesture had been so insignificant. She watches Shao Lee go, Seiren tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket, before she falls back against the mattress.

Where is she going to go from here? While she knows Annette would come to her if she asked, she feels awful at the thought of dragging the woman away from her business to pick up a girl who’d been looked after by her dead friend. She knows Annette cares about her but care would do little to soften the blow. She also knows that Rinslet would be more than willing to help her but she has no idea where Rinslet is; besides, having Eve with her might hinder Rinslet’s work, no matter how much Eve has developed in the past months. Rinslet’s work depends on stealth and Eve’s come to realise that, at the moment, her skills don’t lie in subtlety and stealth.

She sighs and stares for a few moments at the blank television screen. There are no books in the room apart from a leather-bound Bible tucked into the bottom drawer of the bedside table. She’s not in the mood for anything religious. She doesn’t want to read about forgiveness and floods and miraculous resurrections, not after what she’s seen. After a few moments of staring at nothing, she gets up off of the bed to switch the television on.

The screen flickers for a moment before the picture becomes clear. It shows a news report about the birth of a rare leopard cub at a local zoo and Eve settles in to watch it. She could do with some good news and she’s long since come to like baby animals.

“ _The cub should be ready to face the viewing public in a couple of months,”_ the newsreader finishes the story with a smile. After a couple of seconds, her face turns solemn again, “ _And now a recap of our main story tonight; a warning that some images in this report may be upsetting.”_

Eve sits up as the headline changes: **Massacre at isolated mansion.** Her blood runs cold.

“ _Police say that they have no new leads on the culprit or culprits behind a mass killing at an isolated house in Brookmill,”_ Eve can feel a nauseous feeling of dread rising up in her throat, “ _The seven victims were all sweepers of various levels of experience. The police believe that the killing may be the action of a crime organisation out for revenge and advise residents of Brookmill to stay inside until the area is declared safe. We’ll now join our correspondent in Brookmill for a more detailed report.”_

The picture changed, the newsreader vanishing and being replaced by an image of the mansion and a man with black hair flecked with grey. His face is solemn. He was quiet for just a couple of seconds before he launches into his report.

“ _The police report that the killing happened in the middle of the afternoon,”_ he says, those deep dark eyes serious, “ _The isolation of the property made it the perfect place for such a crime to occur undetected. The police received an anonymous call at around 3:30 PM, giving an address and a plea for help. By the time police reached the scene, there was nobody left alive.”_

The picture changes again. This time, it shows seven bodies laid out in a row, all of them covered in white sheets. Eve’s throat works around the ball of hurt that’s risen up again.

“ _They were found riddled with bullet wounds and were identified by the licenses that were discarded in the courtyard. The police found them in a shallow mass grave, with a warning message addressed to another organisation, presumed to be a rival.”_

Eve doesn’t want to hear any more; she gets up at switches the TV off. The dam breaks again and rivers of tears run down her cheeks again. She goes back to curl up on the bed and buries the side of her face in the pillow. Tears escape from her eyes and slide down her cheek, dripping off of her nose and onto the fabric beneath her face.

Shao Lee finds her like that just an hour later, curled on her side with dried tear tracks snaking across her face. He drops the bags that he’s carrying and makes his way to her side. She feels the edge of the mattress sink under his weight. He doesn’t touch her; her just sits and waits for her to bring herself round again.

“ _It_ was on the news,” she explains, pointing at the television, “I just…I thought we’d have missed it but…”

He holds up a hand, “I understand.” There’s a weighted pause, “You don’t need to look so ashamed of yourself; it’s natural to feel like this.”

Eve has to admit, a deep feeling of embarrassment has curdled in her stomach. She feels like she did when Train and Sven first liberated her from Rudman; childish and all too dependent on someone else to take care of her and protect her. She’d vowed to leave that behind and she’s slightly disappointed with herself that she hasn’t succeeded.

“I know,” she hiccups, “But that doesn’t make it easier.”

Shao Lee doesn’t say anything. He simply gets back up to retrieve his bags. His disguise has slipped away again.

“Have a shower and see if you feel any better,” he says, holding one of the bags out to her, “Take it from me, hot water and some soap can do a world of good in making everything fall into place.”

Eve takes the bag from him and withdraws into the bathroom. He’s brought her a change of clothes and a pair of pink flannel pyjamas. She catches sigh6t of herself in the mirror; she looks terrible. Her hair is a mess; her nose is red; her eyes are bloodshot. She runs her fingers through her hair, easing out tangles, wincing when her hand catches on a knot.

She left her clothes in a pile on the floor before she clambers into the shower. The stream of hot water is welcome against her skin; it feels for a moment that it’s washing away her stress and upset. Her hair hangs heavy and wet down her back and she takes the time to pick out the knots. The bathroom fills up with steam, fogging the mirror and causing condensation to build up on the walls.

When she’s cleaned, and somehow feeling better, she wraps her hair up in a towel and pulls on the pyjamas; they’re two sizes too big and hang off of her like she’s a too big coat hanger. The fabric is soft and comfortable though and she pulls the sleeves over her hands, pressing her face against them and sighing.

Shao Lee’s sitting on the second bed, one knee drawn up to his chest, his phone against his ear. His eyebrows are drawn together in a frown; Eve can hear a dial tone on the other end of the phone. She sits on the bed opposite and regards him with curious eyes.

“Trying to get hold of the others,” he explains, pulling the phone away and scrolling through his contact, “No answer from Jenos. Or Sephiria, for that matter, but that’s no surprise; no doubt she has a lot on her plate.”

Eve nods. Reading between the lines, she realises that Shao Lee’s nervous and on edge because of the lack of response. She can understand it; after what happened, she’d want confirmation that everything was OK at HQ, that nothing world-shaking had happened in regards to an organisation that controlled one third of the world.

 While he tries again to reach one of the other Numbers, Eve slides off the bed and goes through the drawers in the bedside cabinets. In the top drawer, she finds a black plastic comb with thick teeth. She unwraps the towel from around her head and her hair falls around her in reedy strands. She combs her hair out slowly, watching Shao Lee’s face. He looks distant and distracted.

“Damn it!” he says, looking at the screen of the phone again, “No answer at all.”

Eve pauses in plaiting her hair. Something cold has seized her heart, “From any of them?”

“Well, haven’t tried Number VIII or Number IV,” Shao Lee pulls a face, “But I don’t think they answer to anyone except Sephiria or Belze.”

Eve frowns, “Train said that one of them is blind. How would he know?”

“Kranz? He has different ringtones so he doesn’t have to ask.”

Eve toys with the end of her braid and waits as he dials the next number. She doesn’t like the look on his face; dread and worry mixing together. She doesn’t know if it’s because of who he’s trying to call or because of the total lack of response from his comrades. She hears a long, loud beep through the phone and then a robotic voice announcing, “ _I’m sorry but the number you have dialled is not available.”_

“Last one?” Eve asks as Shao Lee scrolls through his contacts.

“For now,” he replies. His mouth pulls up into a wry smile, “Bet Kranz isn’t used to being a last resort.”

Eve finds herself chewing on her thumbnail as the phone rings. She’s trying to distract herself from what happened to Sven by diverting her thoughts to everything else; the flowers on the window sill, the embroidered pattern on the quilt covers, the buzz of the city below the window.

“Kranz?” Shao Lee’s voice snaps her away from her thoughts. His tone is hopeful.

There’s a low, dark laugh on the other end of the phone and all the colour drains from Shao Lee’s face. Eve clenches her fists.

“ _Kranz? That’s the Number’s name?”_  Eve moves alongside him and she hears that the man’s voice is low and rough. There’s a shouted protest in the background and then a thump, “ _He hasn’t been very forthcoming. Now the bigger question is, who are you? Are you our missing Chronos Number? Are you the little lost cat?”_

Shao Lee’s frozen, his expression one of horror. The man laughs and the sound of it makes Eve skin crawl.

“ _The trap is closing on you,”_ the man taunts, “ _Chronos is gone. All that’s left is to hunt down th—.”_

Shao Lee abruptly ends the call and discards the phone with shaking hands. He leans forward and presses one hand to his forehead, letting out a long, shuddering breath. Eve only stares at the phone. Chronos gone? Surely that means Creed has overcome them. It would explain the lack of response from the Numbers; presumably, one of them has been captured.

She turns her gaze to Shao Lee. She hasn’t seen anyone look so utterly defeated in a long while. Clearly, everything that he’d planned from here, everything he’d hoped would fall into place has been snatched away and scattered on the winds.

She decides that she can’t leave him. If he’s all that’s left of Chronos, then he’s a wanted man being hunted by a deranged megalomaniac. After her encounter with Durham Glaster, she’d promised herself that she’d help people, help protect them from those who sought to harm them; she wants to help him too, help keep him out of the Apostles’ clutches.

At the end of the day, now they need each other. Now, they’re the only ones in the world that either can trust.

“I’ll stay with you,” she says quietly, “If he was telling the truth and Chronos _is_ gone then that means that the world out there will be in chaos come tomorrow. If I left then you’d be alone in that. That doesn’t sit right with me.”

Shao Lee looks up at her and gives a weak smile, “You and me against the world. Sounds like fun.”

Eve nods. He’s not Sven and he’s not Train; his presence isn’t going to erase their loss. But she’s not asking him to. She doesn’t want a replacement.

Shao Lee stands up and turns on the television again, probably wanting to fill the silence. Eve stays perched on the bed, her braid feeling heavy down her back. The screen flickers into life and the programming has moved on from the news to a soap opera set on an inner city street. She wrinkles her nose up at it before looking to Shao Lee.

He’s leaning against the sideboard, distant and mournful. He’s a closed book, a sealed box, the contents of which she’s so curious about. She feels he knows enough about her, including her vulnerability that she wants to keep hidden until she’s able to overcome it.

This chapter of her life, with him, has had an absolutely awful start. Then again, what she’s learnt from books is that a terrible end doesn’t often lead to a happy beginning.


	3. To Nowhere

_Grief is in two parts. The first is loss; the second is the remaking of life._ **Anne Roiphe.**

* * *

 

A few weeks after the mansion, Shao Lee’s managed to get a rented flat on the outskirts of the city. It’s a small place, with only one bedroom and an en suite bathroom, a tiny kitchen and a living room with barely enough space to manoeuvre. It’s furnished but barely so: a small table with two rickety chairs tucked in the corner of the kitchen, along with a washing machine tucked under one of the countertops; a worn out two-seater settee in the living room, along with a tall bookcase holding only a few old paperbacks; a narrow single bed in the bedroom and a tiny, hole-in-the-wall built in wardrobe. The flat was so much smaller than any of Sven’s hideouts and threadbare but Eve’s grateful for the safe space with its few bare necessities.

“How will you pay for anything?” Eve asks, sitting in the afternoon sun on the old settee, a book in her lap.

“Creed doesn’t know who I am,” Shao Lee says, stirring a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee, “So he can’t freeze any of my assets. I can still access my accounts; I just have to be careful with spending.”

Eve slips a bookmark into her novel and rests her head on the arm of the settee, closing her eyes, just enjoying the warmth of the sun filtering through the net curtain that hangs in front of the window.

“And you have a job,” she says absently.

“Yes,” he blows the steam off of the surface of the coffee before he takes a sip, “Two reasons. One, to keep everything ticking over so we won’t be without if my assets _are_ frozen. Two, to keep suspicion down; people would wonder how I pay rent if I didn’t work and the questions would start. Besides, it gives me something to do during the day other than sitting around getting on edge.”

Eve makes a sound in the back of her throat. She can feel herself dozing off. She opens one eye to look at the black streaks of grease that coat his hands.

“What do you do?” she asks him.

“Nothing a little girl would be interested in.” She sees him smile when he caught sight of her annoyed expression. She knows he’s just teasing but she’s not in the mood for it. “I’m on cleaning duty at a garage. Mopping up oil, scrubbing grease, stuff like that. Hence the streaks. It’s a safety thing more than anything, I think.”

Eve nods. She wishes that she could go out and work as well, to contribute to this temporary life that they’ve set up for themselves. She knows, though, that even if there was work that suited her, that it’s against the law here for her to go into work at her age. Shao Lee tries to alleviate her boredom by bringing home textbooks that he’s bought second hand, giving her the opportunity to expand her education. Her favourites are the psychology ones he fished up last week, detailing the theories behind issues like sleep disorders, addiction, mental illness. Maybe, if this all gets smoothed over and life settles into a normal rhythm with no lunatic organisation at the helm, Eve will consider a career in psychology. Maybe.

She stands up and ventures into the kitchen, bypassing the steaming coffee pot and to the fridge. She paws inside the fridge for the box of doughnuts that Shao Lee had brought back for her yesterday, picking out one coated in chocolate icing. She takes it out to the balcony, sitting on the edge against the railing, allowing her legs to dangle over the edge. In truth, it can barely be called a balcony; it’s really more of a ledge of concrete jutting out from below the long kitchen window, ringed by the iron bars that form the railing. Eve likes it enough though; it provides a good place to think, high above the city, where she won’t be interrupted. Shao Lee doesn’t like it. He pins it on a nervousness around heights but Eve has the sneaking suspicion that it makes him feel vulnerable and exposed to be out in the air like that with no walls to shield him.

She presses her face against the railings while she picks the chocolate icing off of the doughnut, licking it off of her fingers. It’s only a fourth floor balcony but it gives a good enough view over the low rooftops of the surrounding houses as well as the brown ribbon of a river that weaves through the city. Eve watches a flock of pigeons squabbling over something on a roof while she eats. She tears off a scrap from the doughnut and flicks it at a lone seagull on the roof below, watching as it gobbled the scrap up like it was the last food in the world.

It’s weird how much the world carries on around her, as if Creed hasn’t rocked her own world to its core.

“Eve?” Shao Lee asks from behind her. She looks around to see him hovering in the kitchen. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she says once she swallows, “Just…thinking.”

She knows that he’s concerned about how she’s coping with the events of a few weeks ago. She tries her best to hide her stress, her upset, and she’s mostly successful. Sometimes, though, she finds Shao Lee asleep on the settee, one of her psychology books open on his chest to the pages on the stages of grief and how people cope with it. She wonders if she’s ever slipped and revealed how she feels during times when the mansion weighs heavily on her mind or if he’s reading them because he doesn’t know how to deal with his own emotions in the aftermath of that disastrous phone call.

She worries about him; Chronos didn’t seem like the type of organisation that encouraged healthy coping mechanisms in its members, especially in the Numbers.

He regards her like he doesn’t think she’s being entirely honest but he doesn’t ask about what’s on her mind.

“It’s a nice view when the sun goes down,” Eve says absently, gesturing to the city, “Especially at night, when all you can see are the lights. What’s the real reason you don’t like it out here?”

She twists to look at him. He shrugs one shoulder, as if he’s completely disinterested. A soft breeze blows through the open window, fluttering the light curtains and ruffling his fringe. Eve feels goosebumps rise up over her arms.

“I just don’t like heights,” he says, “Never have.”

She scoots back from the balcony edge and stood up, dusting off her clothes. It’s odd that they’ve started to settle into an almost normal routine. It feels almost as if they’re not in hiding. As if the world hasn’t crumbled down into ashes around them.

The worry has drained from Shao Lee’s face and lines have eased around his eyes. It’s strange; he frets more than Sven. But his age, his identity remains an enigma despite his worries. He catches her staring and she looks away. She picks up the newspaper from the kitchen table and takes it through to the living room, spreading the paper out on the settee next to her, leaving Shao Lee in the kitchen. She can hear him clattering through the cupboards.

Flicking through the paper, she sees headlines of economic decline, of a city being pummelled into submission. Eve feels fear squeeze her heart, since Creed was gradually bringing this part of the country under his control, using an army of criminals and his own foot soldiers. It’s mixed with sympathy, for the people who were suffering because of this.

She wishes she could be out there.

She flips the page, searching for another story, something more positive that doesn’t ring of doomsday. She flips past a story about a local celebrity’s marriage and skims a story about some unique cats that had been picked up by an animal shelter.  After flipping through a couple of other pages, she catches sight of a familiar face.

Her own eyes look up at her in black and white from the page. Below the picture, there’s a headline announcing that she’s wanted by the Apostles for “enquiries.” There’s an announcement of a bounty for her capture. Her blood runs cold.

“Shao Lee,” she says, standing up with the paper, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. She takes the paper through to the kitchen, laying it flat on the table, “Look at this.”

Shao Lee looks round from where he’d been rooting through the cupboards, looking for something to accompany the tinned salmon that he’d found for dinner. He leans on the table and examines the article. The only change in his expression is a raised eyebrow.

“You don’t feel safe now?” he asks, glancing up at her.

Eve hesitates. While she knows it’s a lie, she wants to say no; she knows that if she tells the truth, Shao Lee will organise a move for them. She doesn’t want to do that, not after they’ve only just managed to put down some roots here, not until they find something out about resisting Creed.

“Well, this doesn’t help,” she says eventually, “If they find out I’m here…”

She trails off, unwilling and uncertain about how to finish that sentence. On the one hand, there’s very little reason to feel unsafe; the Apostles don’t know she’s here, sweepers don’t know she’s here, and there was no real threat in the paper. “Enquiries” could mean anything. However, on the other hand, she knows what the Apostles are capable of; murder, terrorism, human experimentation. The vague nature of “enquiry” combined with what Eve knows make her afraid. Not only for herself but for Shao Lee as well; she doesn’t want anyone else to die because of these people.

“We’ll leave,” Shao Lee says firmly when she hesitated, “If you’re worried, we’ll go. The Apostles don’t control everything yet.”

“But where would we go?”

“I can find somewhere,” Shao Lee says, tipping the cold dregs of the coffee into the kitchen sink, rinsing it away, “We can go tonight.”


	4. To Sanctuary

_The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel. He heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. **Psalm 147:4**_

* * *

 

Eve presses up against the dirty wall behind her, pressing herself out of the dim pool of light thrown onto the matted carpet by the bulb. The house has a feeling of abandonment and decay hanging over it. The smell of mould and damp rises up from the carpets and floors. Eve wrinkles her nose at the smell and trots to catch up with Shao Lee.

He’s come here after a tipoff about the location of some Chronos officials. His source had told him that there’d be someone who could point him in the direction to reunite with some of his fellows from Chronos. Both he and Eve had debated whether to take up the opportunity or to play it safe and stay away, eventually deciding to go but to be ready to bolt as soon as the situation turned, if it did.

A floorboard creaks under Shao Lee’s feet and he flinches slightly at the sound. Up ahead, a door is open a crack and a thin sliver of bright light pours out over the faded carpet. Eve catches up alongside him, one hand behind her back, shifting into a short blade. Seiren is twisted in a loop in Shao Lee’s right hand.

“What’s your gut saying?” she asks softly.

Shao Lee frowns slightly, “Nothing, at the moment.” He steps forward and looks through the crack in the door, blocking out the band of yellow light.

“What does it look like?”

He turns to look at her, the light glinting in his blue eyes, “Guess.”

Eve huffs, “Dirty, dingy and dull.”

“Pretty much,” Shao Lee says, pushing the door open, “You missed empty.”

The door swings, creaking slightly on rusty hinges, and reveals the room to be devoid of any people. The floorboards are bare apart from an old rug and most of the furniture is covered with off-white sheets. It looks like it hasn’t been lived in for months at least. There’s a piece of paper folded on the rug. While Shao Lee checks the room for any traps or explosives, Eve picks the paper up off of the rug and unfolds it.

There’s only one word scrawled on the paper: _Surprise._

She drops the paper, “Shao Lee, I think—“

Before she could finish her sentence, there was a flash of orange and a deafening boom from a shotgun. Eve seizes Shao Lee’s jacket and hauls him to the ground whilst the window shatters, the curtains flaring and the air filling with the smell of burning cotton. Her ears ring with pain. Shao Lee lifts his head and she can see his lips moving but can’t hear any sound. She looks up to see the curtains smoking slightly and the window’s completely shattered, glass littering the floor. Beyond the broken window frame, she can see dark shapes moving outside.

She stands up and pulls Shao Lee to his feet, helping him gather Seiren from where it twisted on the floor. There’s a gash on his forehead that trickles blood down his face, clotting in his eyebrow and sticking to his bangs.

“OK,” Shao Lee says, sounding like he’s speaking through a mouthful of cotton, “This was…this was stupid.”

He sways slightly as he walks, slightly dazed from the blast, but the pair of them rush out of the room and back down the hall, Eve ahead of him. The front door hangs wide open, showing the thin line of amber as the sun sets. She feels a rush of heat as her hand shifts again, melding from a short blade to a heavy mallet, and she bursts out into the fresh air, swinging as she does.

The mallet thuds into the ground just a few inches from a woman’s feet, her boots skidding slightly on the gravel as she dodges backwards. Eve lifts the mallet again and fixes the woman with a glare. This isn’t the person who fired the shot gun; the only weapon she has is a small handgun and she’s at the wrong end of the house besides.

The woman sets her mouth into a determined line and she dances around Eve to aim the gun at Shao Lee, firing in a few short bursts. Shao Lee quickly brings Seiren up, the light of the setting sun catching on the orichalcum, flaring the fabric to act as a shield. As the sound of gunfire fades, the smell of gunpowder burning the air, Eve picks up the sound of boots pounding on concrete and she turns.

A man charges at her, a club held aloft, and she lifts her arm to block it, replacing the mallet with a blade. The club lodges on the sharp edge and she yanks it away. Tossing the club aside, she crouches and rolls, slashing at the man’s leg. Not quick enough to get away, a gash opens up on his lower leg. He dodges to the side and withdraws a knife from a holster on his belt, ignoring Eve for a moment to join the woman.

Seiren is a ribbon of silver as Shao Lee dodges to the side, flicking Seiren up in an attempt to knock the gun out of the woman’s hand. He’s holding back; Eve can see that. Deep down, she knows that if she weren’t there, these people would have been done for. She lunges forward and grabs hold of the man’s leg, pulling it out from under him and making him topple to the ground before he can duck under Shao Lee’s defence.

“For fuck’s sake,” the man grunts. He catches her in a backhand before she can flinch away and she gasps as her neck clicks.

“Eve!” Shao Lee shouts, knocking the woman aside and kicking the gun away from her hands, sending it spinning across the paving and into the bushes. The woman doesn’t get up.

The man shoves Eve away and barrels into Shao Lee, the bulk of him knocking the Number to the ground. Seiren ends up on the ground, just out of Shao Lee’s reach. The man’s knife glints in the dim sunlight as he lifts it.

Eve gets to her feet, wincing at her scraped knees. Shao Lee’s wrestling to keep the man’s knife away from his face; without Seiren, he has very little in terms of defence, being only slight compared to the other man. He shoves at the man’s arm and the knife jerks but the man just pins Shao Lee’s arm down, the bones of his wrist crunching.

Another gunshot rings out, this time from a handgun rather than a shotgun. Eve flinches at the sound and the man freezes before turning towards the sound, still crushing Shao Lee’s wrist in his hand. Eve follows his gaze.

Behind her, there’s a second woman, this one holding a pistol with a shotgun slung over her shoulder. One hand holds the pistol aloft while the other grasps for something in her back pocket. A pair of handcuffs clinks from her belt.

‘ _Sweeper,’_ Eve thinks and she feels like she’s been plunged into cold water; they’re here for her.

The woman edges around her fallen comrade and picks up Seiren, shaking out dirt and leaf litter from its shining folds. She slings it over her shoulder alongside the rifle.

“Let him up,” she orders, “He can’t do much with bare hands, can he?”

The man stands up, letting go of Shao Lee’s wrist. Gingerly, Shao Lee gets to his feet, holding his wrist close. He glares at the woman but the gun trained on him keeps him from doing much else. The woman smirks and pulls a sheet of paper out of her back pocket. Eve recognises it as her own bounty poster and her heart sinks even further.

“Three. Million,” the woman says, “Ain’t many people willing to pay that much, not for a little girl. What makes you so special, huh?”

Eve scowls and her fingers curl into fists at her sides. The woman notices the movement and lifts the gun again, pressing the muzzle against Shao Lee’s head. She tosses Seiren away before he can grab it and he levels his coldest glare at her.

“I wouldn’t,” she warns, “I can put a bullet in him just as quickly as you can change.”

Eve looks between her and Shao Lee, worry starting to gnaw through her stomach. While she’s confident that she can transform and move quick enough, she doesn’t want to risk Shao Lee getting a hole in his head because she underestimated her opponent. The thought brings up reminders of Sven and the worry changes to feeling sick. Her shoulders slump.

“Good girl,” the woman says but she doesn’t lower the gun, “You’ll cooperate?”

“You haven’t given me a choice.”

The woman nods at the man and he crouches to pick up their unconscious friend. She seizes Shao Lee’s collar and shoves him to the ground, betraying the strength hidden by her fairer looks. With the unconscious woman slung over one shoulder, the man grabs Eve’s upper arm to lead her away, ignoring her blazing glare; the woman walks alongside, still facing Shao Lee, the gun held aloft.

“Eve!” Shao Lee shouts and she turns to glance behind her. The man yanks on her arm, keeping her from stopping.

Shao Lee’s back on his feet, scraped up slightly from his falls. He looks from the gun to the woman’s steely face and then at Seiren. Looking between them, Eve knows what’s going to happen even before Shao Lee makes his move.

“Shao, don’t do it!” she shouts but it’s too late and he’s already moving to snatch Seiren up.

The gun going off makes Eve’s ears ring.

* * *

 

Shao Lee won’t stop shaking. It’s been three days since their clash with the sweepers and one day since the shakes started.  The gun that he’d been shot with had been weaker than Eve had thought; the bullet had broken the bone in Shao Lee’s upper arm and stayed lodged there, lacking the power to exit. She eases him down onto a park bench, the moon shining overhead, and turns the torch onto the wound.

“You’re bleeding,” she says, disappointed to see that the makeshift bandages hadn’t done much to stem the blood. The fabric was dark and sticky.

“I know,” he says, lifting his good arm to press his hand over the bandages. He nods towards the park fence, “How’s it l-look over there?”

“Guess,” Eve says, pulling the same thing that he’d done to her on their second flight from the Apostles. His mouth quirks up in a weak smile.

“Typical small town,” he says, “No one under the age of fifty and still using a horse and cart as transport.”

“So wrong,” Eve says, smiling, “There are cars and I saw a teenager sneak back home.”

“G-good,” he sighs and his head rocks forward slightly.

Eve looks back at the wound. She lifts his good hand off of it and forces the torch into his grip.

“Hold this so I can check it,” she orders. Shao Lee holds the torch in his weak grip and points the beam at the bandages, the light making the sticky blood look so much worse. Eve bites her lip as she unravels the bandages from around his arm.

Beneath the bandages, Eve can see the wound is starting to fester. The skin around the bullet hole is shiny and streaked with red. Bloody pus oozes from the injury, yellow in the light of the torch. His flushed skin was hot to the touch and the edges of the wound dark, almost black. The bandages were soupy with blood and pus. She bites back a retch and the reek of infection.

“Pr-pretty b-b-bad, huh?” Shao Lee says, eyes closed, shaking enough that his teeth chattered.

“Yeah,” Eve says. She looks round and, though the leaves of a tree, she sees a neon sign advertising a 24 hour shop and pharmacy. She shrugs off her backpack and roots around the bottom, looking for her purse. She hopes that she can stretch the last of the money to get some food, enough to keep Shao Lee going until she can get a doctor.

“You’ll be OK waiting here?” she asks, taking Seiren out of her backpack and pressing it into his good hand, “I’ll be back in a bit.”

Shao Lee follows her gaze and he nods, “I’ll st-stay out trouble.”

She pulls her backpack up onto her back and turns to leave the park, setting her jaw and refusing to look back in case her guilt at leaving an injured man on his own overwhelms her. She’d been with him since that day with the sweepers, keeping him safe until she could find someone else to help. She wonders how Sven would handle it…

‘ _Sven isn’t here,’_ she thinks, vaulting over the fence and landing with a thud, ‘ _You need to do this on your own.’_

The pharmacy is deserted when she walks in, the fluorescent lights making her blink. She ignores the rows of sweet smelling shampoos and soaps and heads for the first aid section, hoping to find some antiseptic to help against the infection. All the bottles are mild and she knows that they won’t be strong enough. Dismayed, she abandons the medical section and heads to pick up a couple of muesli bars and the remaining fresh fruit on display. It’s not much but at least it’s something.

She sets the food on the counter and, soon enough, a woman emerges from the back room, her hair drawn back into a tight bun. Behind her, Eve can see rows of shelves stacked with boxes.

“Do you have anything for infections?” she asks as the woman scans, “Infected injuries I mean.”

The woman doesn’t even glance up, “What kind? Cut on some glass? Kitchen accident?”

Eve hesitates, “A gunshot to the arm.”

The woman freezes and she goes slightly pale. She looks back at Eve, her mouth slightly agape with shock, “Hold on one moment.”

She vanishes into the back room again and Eve fidgets. She hopes that the woman isn’t calling for the police or anything like that; she can’t be arrested, not now with a bounty on her head and Shao Lee waiting for her in the park. She fishes her purse out and counts her money out on the counter. Eventually the woman returns, carrying a brown bottle in a paper bag, her face still slightly ashen.

“This should do it,” she says, voice shaking slightly.

While she rings everything up, Eve scratches at a mark on the glass counter.

“Is there a doctor around here?” she asks, pushing the money forwards when the woman asks, “Or a clinic?”

The woman drops the change into Eve’s hand, “Doctor Flint runs a 24 hour clinic. But I…I don’t think he’s equipped to deal with a bullet wound.”

“Thank you,” Eve says with a smile, taking the plastic bag, the medicine knocking against her leg. She quickly leaves the shop, eager to leave the woman’s staring eyes behind.

When she gets back to the park, Shao Lee’s slumped over on the bench, injured arm held close. He looks worse than when she’d left him, despite her not being gone for long. Sweat beads on his forehead and his face is nearly entirely drained of colour. He looks up when she approaches and his brow is creased with pain. His eyes are too bright from fever. She brings the bottle out of the bag.

“This might help,” she says, setting it down on the bench while she tears off a scrap of her shirt to use to clean the injury, “With the infection.”

Shao Lee nods and gingerly rolls the sleeve up, his teeth digging into his lower lip as he peels the blood soaked fabric away from the bullet hole. Eve twists the cap off of the bottle and pours some of the yellow antiseptic onto the scrap from her shirt, wrinkling her nose at the antiseptic smell.

“This will sting,” she warns.

“I can handle it,” he says, turning his face away, “Just try and do it quick.”

Eve grits her teeth and presses the soaked rag against the injury. Almost immediately, Shao Lee tries to flinch away, his arm jerking.  Eve holds onto him and tries to shut her ears against his pained groans. The stink of infection is smothered by the reek of antiseptic, both smells enough to make her want to gag. He tries to pull away again and Eve just tightens her grip, gently wiping antiseptic over the injury, the rag coming away bloody.

“It’ll be fine,” she soothes, opting to ignore the tears. He doesn’t look at her and she can feel his shaking worsen. She bites her lip and picks up the bottle again, “There’s a doctor in town. I’ll get you to him.”

* * *

 

The clinic is a small red brick building tucked in a narrow street. There are grey blinds drawn over the windows but a light still shines through the cracks. A sign by the door reads: _24 Hour clinic. Doctor on Duty: Doctor Flint._ The doctor’s name is pencilled in, written on a separate sheet and then slotted into the sign. Eve adjusts her hold on Shao Lee, who’s leaning against her, and nudges the door open with a toe.

The tired looking receptionist needs to look at them twice before he realises what happened. He leaps up from his chair, suddenly wide awake, and comes around his desk, knocking his hip on the corner as he does.

“Doc!” he calls as he pounds on a white door, “It’s a bad one!”

Eve eases Shao Lee down onto one of the waiting room chairs, feeling his forehead to check his fever. He pushes her hand away.

“Don’t w-worry so much,” he says. The shaking has lessened but not vanished completely, “You’ll get grey hair. And you’re only eleven.”

“Closer to thirteen, actually.”

She hears a door open and the murmur of voices before the receptionist leaves the building, keys jingling in his hand. Shao Lee looks up when footsteps approach and Eve straightens and turns to face the doctor.

He’s tall, broad shouldered and dark skinned, wearing a white lab coat over his clothes, his face creased in concern. Eve steps aside, fiddling with the straps on her backpack, to allow the doctor to examine Shao Lee.

“All right, boy-o,” he says, “Let’s see what the damage is while Rhys is getting the van ready.”

His voice has that calm quality that every doctor somehow managed to master. He helps Shao Lee to his feet and helps him into his surgery, helping him onto the examination bench. Eve follows, ducking in and closing the door behind her.

“When did this happen?” the doctor asks, unravelling the makeshift bandage and using scissors to cut the sleeve away from the injury.

“About…three d-days ago,” Shao Lee says, turning away to avoid looking at the gunshot, “Sweepers.”

The doctor doesn’t even pause, “Is that why you didn’t go to hospital?”

Eve and Shao Lee exchange a look before she answers, “It’s not that simple.”

Doctor Flint swabs the dried blood and pus away from the injury, “It’s all confidential here. You can trust me.”

The fingers of Shao Lee’s left hand curl up against his palm and he hisses as Doctor Flint cleans the injury; despite Eve’s best efforts, she hadn’t been able to stem the bleeding again, although she hoped that her cleaning efforts had done something to lessen the damage.

She can see that the doctor is waiting for an answer and she drops her backpack onto the ground. With Shao Lee’s injury, they have no choice but to trust this man if he’s going to see any improvement in his condition so she decides to extend that trust to telling him about Shao Lee’s identity. She knows from headlines and snatches of news reports that the Apostles are cracking down on hunting members of Chronos across the republic so it’s almost certain that Doctor Flint will recognise what a Chronos Number is.

She draws Seiren out of her backpack, the silver threads catching the lights of the surgery, “He’s a Chronos Number.”

Something like realisation dawns on Doctor Flint’s face; Shao Lee tries to stay as impassive as possible, his features only betraying how much he was in pain.

“You can’t turn us in,” Eve says sharply, prepared to take Shao Lee and bolt if they have to, “Doctors swear an oath to help people, no matter who they are. If you help him, we’ll leave and you don’t have to worry about the Apostles coming here.”

“I’ll help you,” Doctor Flint says, his tone carrying that same strange realisation as his expression, “But I can’t treat you here. The bullet didn’t exit and the bone’s damaged. He needs a hospital.”

He turns away from Shao Lee for a moment, lifting a briefcase that had been stashed underneath his desk. He clicks it open and lifts the lid to reveal two neat rows of syringes. Eve eyes them suspiciously while Shao Lee just looks in the other direction.

“I have to ask,” Doctor Flint says, taking one syringe out of the brief case, “Have you eaten at all in the past 24 hours?”

Shao Lee grimaces, “God no.”

“Good,” Doctor Flint says, returning to Shao Lee’s side, “This contains a dose of morphine, to relieve the pain.”

“Why do you have that?” Eve asks, packing Seiren back into the bag, watching as Doctor Flint searched for a vein in Shao Lee’s good arm.

“Emergencies,” Doctor Flint says, wiping the crook of Shao Lee’s elbow with an alcohol swab, “Are you all right?”

“I’ve never liked needles,” Shao Lee says with a tense smile.

Doctor Flint pushes the needle in and presses down, forcing the drug out of the syringe. Eve watches as Shao Lee looks everywhere except at the needle. The needle withdraws and the injection site is swabbed again before the needle is discarded. Doctor Flint snaps the briefcase closed again.

“I can’t splint that arm,” he says, “I don’t have anything to do it with.”

The receptionist, Rhys, opens the door and peers into the surgery, “Van’s ready, Doc. Is it A&E or…?”

Doctor Flint shakes his head, “Not A&E. He’s a special case.”

Rhys nods and vanishes again. Eve looks from Doctor Flint, who’s sending a frantic text message to someone, to Shao Lee, whose head is nodding forward slightly. She moves to stand next to him and gingerly touches his good arm, catching his attention.

“Are you all right?” she asks and feels ridiculous for doing so.

“I think I will be,” Shao Lee replies, ruffling her hair slightly.

“Miss?” Doctor Flint asks, Eve turning to face him. He’s holding the briefcase again, “Can you hold onto this for us? I’ll get him to the van.”

Eve looks him up and down before accepting the briefcase, retrieving her backpack with her free hand. The case is lighter than it looks, much lighter than Sven’s ever was by far. Doctor Flint lifts Shao Lee off of the table, one arm under his knees and the other around his waist, holding him so that his injured arm lies limp across his stomach.

“Come on the, boy-o,” Doctor Flint says, ignoring how Shao Lee squirms against his hold, “Time to get you help.”

* * *

 

Eve sits on a small chair outside of the bunker’s hospital, kicking her heels against the chair legs. Doctor Flint had taken Shao Lee into surgery almost as soon as they’d arrived, greeted by a couple of nurses, and hadn’t emerged from the theatre in a couple of hours. Eve had been shown to a private room with a small metal bed and bedside table by a stern faced woman in a military uniform.

She’d been told that this was a bunker built by Chronos and that this was where Doctor Flint brought any members of Chronos who he found. She hasn’t seen any other Numbers she recognises and she’d wondered if Shao Lee might be the only one left.

She picking at her finger nails when the door next to her opens and Doctor Flint looks round, still scrubbed up and peeling off a pair of blood spattered rubber gloves.

“You bitten them to the quick yet?” he asks, voice muffled by the surgical mask.

Eve slides of her chair, nerves gnawing at her stomach, “Is he OK?”

“He will be,” Doctor Flint says, pulling the mask away from his face, “He might not be happy but he will be OK.”

She tries to peer around him but she can’t see much past a couple of empty beds. She catches the scent of antiseptic and the murmur of voices, along with the rolling of metal wheels but it doesn’t reveal much.

“Can I see him?” she asks, looking Doctor Flint in the eye.

“Not for long,” he says, stepping aside to let her through, “And try to be quiet; I have a couple of other patients trying to recover.”

Eve nods. The hospital is mostly empty, apart from a couple of beds with thin plastic curtains drawn around them; she can see the silhouette of their occupants but that’s all. One of the nurses is wheeling a trolley of surgical tools out of theatre and her eyes bunch as she offers Eve a smile from behind her surgical mask. Eve catches sight of Shao Lee at the far end of the hospital and her footsteps quicken, Doctor Flint following not far behind.

The first thing she notices is that they’ve cut his hair short, trimming his bangs and tidying it up a little. An IV line runs from his left arm to a drip beside the bed and he doesn’t even stir as she approaches.

“The anaesthetic hasn’t worn off yet,” Doctor Flint explains, stopping beside her, “Probably won’t for a couple of hours.”

“Why did you cut his hair?” Eve asks, slightly puzzled.

Doctor Flint suppresses a cough, “It will be easier for him.”

Eve’s about to ask why when she notices his right arm. There’s a surgical napkin underneath where he’d been shot, bandages wrapped around the injury. The bandages also cover a stump, since everything below the elbow has been removed.

“The bullet did more than we thought,” Doctor Flint says when he sees her stricken expression, “Not only a bad infection but the bones were badly fractured. It would take resources we don’t have to rehabilitate him.”

“So you amputated?” Eve says, moving round to the right side of the bed, noting how some blood is seeping through the bandages, staining the edges of the fabric slightly red.

“He can recover.”

Eve shudders at the thought of it. She doesn’t want to know what’s been done with the rest of Shao Lee’s arm. Instead of allowing her mind to dwell on that, she changes topic.

“What do you know about Chronos?”

“I used to be part of their medical corps,” Doctor Flint says, checking the IV, “A group of doctors trusted with treating members when doctors not in the know couldn’t be trusted.” He pauses, considering what to say next, “It’s why I’m trying to find as many as I can. I took an oath on entering that corps to take care of Chronos members when they needed it and I intend to keep honouring that.”

Eve nods, “Do you know all of the Numbers?”

“I know them all by name but not much else.”

“And you want to bring them here? All of them?”

“If I can. And make sure they’re in one piece, treat any injuries if I can. We have plans.”

Eve looks up again to meet his eyes. While they still have the concern of a doctor, there’s also traces of the cold steeliness of Chronos.

“And we’re safe here?”

It’s Doctor Flint’s turn to nod, “As safe as you can be until this is all over.”

He turns away again when his nurse beckons to him. Eve brushes Shao Lee’s bangs away from his forehead; he still has a fever but now, at least, he can get better. The clipboard next to the bed details an antibiotics plan to fight off the rest of the infection. Eve draws up a chair next to the bed and settles in for a vigil.

“Safe until this blows over,” she repeats the doctor’s words under her breath. She folds her arms on the blankets in front of her and leans forwards to rest her chin on her forearms, watching Shao Lee sleep.

“Until then,” she says, “I’ll stay right here.”


End file.
